The Government of the United Republic of Tanzania is arranging eviction of 73,000 out of 93,000 Maasai residents from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA). Thousands more Maasai pastoralists will be evicted from the neighboring Lake Natron and Lolindo Game Controlled Areas.
The reasons given to justify the seemingly inevitable removal is the allegedly deterioration and depletion of vegetation, wildlife and the landscape within the gigantic NCA.
The Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Dr. Hamisi Kigwangalla, recently instructed the ministerial taskforce assigned to review the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Multiple Land Use Model to ensure active participation of indigenous residents, namely the Maasai, the Barabaig and the Hadza, in the process that will see the area stretched from the current 8,100 km2 to 12,404 km2 by annexing Loliondo and Lake Natron Game Controlled Areas and remove all but only 20,000 indigenous residents therein with land use restrictions pursuant to delineated zones.
Prior to this instruction the processes has been moving on completely ignoring the residents. At almost the final stage of the report was when the residents complained through the mass media. Following this discontent Kigwangalla told the taskforce to involve residents of Ngorongoro. Four handpicked community representatives join the taskforce. The taskforce sidelined them still.
Speaking on condition of anonymity one of the four community representatives said, “The taskforce will not allow dialogue. It wants residents with opinions to submit them in writing. We thought that we will go to the villages in Ngorongoro to start dialogue on the matter.”
The Government however is adamantly determined to evict pastoralists from their land. As far as Loliondo Game Controlled Area is concerned there is a case at the East African Court of Justice. Three village Governments sued the Government of Tanzania for land induced human rights violations. Attempts to annex the desputed land amounts to contempt of court.
The looming eviction is a humanitarian crisis of immense proportions. Yet it is a systemic attack on the Maasai of Ngorongoro. The British colonial of Tanganyika violently evicted them in 1950s to give room for the establishment of the world famous Serengeti National Park. The colonial Government promised never to evict the Maasai again in the future like now in the year 2020.
This promise have never been honored. Successive Governments of Tanganyika, as Tanzania was called before the union with Zanzibar in 1964, continue to restrict Maasai from using their ancestral land. In Ngorongoro Conservation Area they suffer untold suffering including abject poverty.
You can watch an infographic video informing about the brief history of Ngorongoro establishment by clicking Ngorongoro Conservation Areas in a Few Seconds.